On my 4th week of 80mg/week TRT. Hopefully when I go in for my next round of bloodwork and follow-up, My PA will increase my dosage.
I’m 6’4", 215lbs, and my strength and muscle have been stagnant for a long time… although when I incorporated consisten Stronglifts 5x5 for the past year, my strength went up quickly, stall, and then I would have to deload all lifts. I made slow gains, and tried to eat enough, but my hunger was never huge, so I had to force feed. Right before TRT, I switched to Starting Strength, which I like better because you don’t hit the wall so fast as with 5x5. Still, I’m slightly skinny fat, tall and lanky. I have switched up to Kinobody’s Greek God program while starting TRT to put on the strategic “pretty muscle” and give my thighs a recovery period.
So, my question is, I know at these low doses of TRT, I’m not going to make great gains unless my guy kicks me up a notch. So, has anyone tried stacking Ostarine at 20mg/day on top of TRT? Is it a waste of time? Should I kickstart my gains with 4-6 weeks of Dbol first, and then replace it with Ostarine?
I’m not willing to go full Dark Side, but will push the envelope a little. I just want to get to 230 and drop bodyfat below 12%.
Sounds like you don’t know how to eat or train if you believe you can’t be any better than skinny-fat on TRT. That’s pitiful. Maybe fix this before upping the drugs, eh?
I’ll go ahead and answer your ostarine and dbol questions directly, just so you don’t bitch about my initial response too much. I’ve never heard of ‘kick starting’ an ostarine cycle with an actual steroid. The dbol itself would be FAR more effective than the ostarine. What you’re suggesting there makes no sense.
Ostarine in general is MARGINALLY useful at best, and actually useless at worst. Hard to say for sure, the evidence that it’s effective is just minimal, and then there are sourcing issues… dosing may not be what it says it is, stuff like that. I don’t believe that if you just stack ostarine on top of trt that you will actually notice a difference in strength or muscular gains.
So back to the dbol. If you run dbol, even at a level as low as, say, 25mg/day, you’ll notice it. Dbol is an awesome steroid, and 4-6 weeks is plenty of time for it to be effective. I’m not recommending that you run it, because I don’t think you’re advanced enough to be using steroids. I don’t think you’ll learn to train and eat properly if you go down the drug route now. But that being said, if you do decide to go this route, there are few combinations out there that beat the basic dbol/test combo.
I’m not going to bitch back, as I appreciate honest opinions. I agree with the diet part, as I’m all over the place with it, but I am trying to get it where it needs to be. As for Training, being 6’4", I figured Stronglifts would be a good routine to follow for simple strength and size gains, and maybe it is - and maybe the low-T had something to do with my marginal muscle gains.
I’ve figured my ballpark macros using all kinds of different online calculators, etc, and they all vary. Do you have a good recommendation to use - and just stick with?
I’m going to run the Kinobody routine for a few months to see if the varied reps help with putting on muscle. I will probably at some point jump back to Starting Strength for awhile, because I like it.
I don’t see how your height is relevant to which training program you pick. But yes, stronglifts is fine. I don’t have any idea what kinobody is, so I can’t comment on that. Yes, your previous low T would certainly have contributed to your lack of success. I guess I didn’t realize that you had JUST started your TRT, when I saw you were on your 4th week, I assumed that was your 4th week at that dose, not your 4th week of TRT, period. That’s my mistake. Knowing that, I would DEFINITELY suggest just seeing what TRT does for you on its own, rather than adding things to it.
Without knowing your diet history, I can’t really tell you a macro breakdown to follow. But there are good diet threads, and more importantly articles, that can help you on this site. I like Nate Miyaki’s general diet theories. I will say, food choices are extremely important, beyond macros for most people. A lot of times, cleaning up a diet will fix the macro problem.